German-American Discourse on Politics and Culture

December 30, 2004

The death of Susan Sontag this week has received extensive coverage in Germany. Germany's minister of culture - Christina Weiss - called Sontag America's Conscience: „Mit ihren leidenschaftlichen Appellen an Vernunft und Verantwortung
der Politik wurde sie zum öffentlichen Gewissen der Vereinigten
Staaten“, sagte Weiss. And that moniker has been repeated in most of the tributes.

Sontag had a special connection to Germany and German culture. As a young girl, she met Thomas Mann in Los Angeles. She was an expert in German literature and thought, introducing Elias Canetti and Walter Benjamin to American readers. She called herself "the most famous Germanist, who can't speak German." She spoke about this in her acceptance speech last year for the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Even before Bach and
Mozart and Beethoven and Schubert and Brahms, there were a few German
books. I am thinking of a teacher in an elementary school in a small
town in southern Arizona, Mr. Starkie, who had awed his pupils by
telling us that he had fought with Pershing's army in Mexico against
Pancho Villa: this grizzled veteran of an earlier American imperialist
venture had, it seems, been touched --- in translation --- by the
idealism of German literature, and, having taken in my particular
hunger for books, loaned me his own copies of Werther and Immensee.

Soon after, in my
childhood orgy of reading, chance led me to other German books,
including Kafka's "In the Penal Colony," where I discovered dread and
injustice. And a few years later, when I was a high school student in
Los Angeles, I found all of Europe in a German novel. No book has been
more important in my life than The Magic Mountain --- whose
subject is, precisely, the clash of ideals at the heart of European
civilization. And so on, through a long life that has been steeped in
German high culture. Indeed, after the books and the music, which were,
given the cultural desert in which I lived, virtually clandestine
experiences, came real experiences. For I am also a late beneficiary of
the German cultural diaspora, having had the great good fortune of
knowing well some of the incomparably brilliant Hitler refugees, those
writers and artists and musicians and scholars that America received in
the 1930s and who so enriched the country, particularly its
universities. Let me name two I was privileged to count as friends when
I was in my late teens and early twenties, Hans Gerth and Herbert
Marcuse; those with whom I studied at the University of Chicago and at
Harvard, Christian Mackauer and Paul Tillich and Peter Heinrich von
Blanckenhagen, and in private seminars, Aron Gurwitsch and Nahum
Glatzer; and Hannah Arendt, whom I knew after I moved to New York in my
mid-twenties --- so many models of the serious, whose memory I would
like to evoke here.

The entire speech - which received no coverage in the US press - is remarkable, and one of the best analyses of the US - European Rift . The rift was evident at the actual event of Sontag's speech, as Frank Olbert recalls in the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger:

Susan Sontag was in Berlin when the planes hit the towers on 9/11: her observations at the time eerily foretold what would become of America, and for that she was reviled by most of the American media and the political establishment. Her last contribution - commentary on the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison - Regarding the Torture of Others in the New York Times Magazine may also be one of her most important.

But the real push to limit the accessibility of the photographs will
come from the continuing effort to protect the administration and cover
up our misrule in Iraq -- to identify ''outrage'' over the photographs
with a campaign to undermine American military might and the purposes
it currently serves. Just as it was regarded by many as an implicit
criticism of the war to show on television photographs of American
soldiers who have been killed in the course of the invasion and
occupation of Iraq, it will increasingly be thought unpatriotic to
disseminate the new photographs and further tarnish the image of
America.

After all, we're at war. Endless war. And war is hell, more so than any
of the people who got us into this rotten war seem to have expected. In
our digital hall of mirrors, the pictures aren't going to go away. Yes,
it seems that one picture is worth a thousand words. And even if our
leaders choose not to look at them, there will be thousands more
snapshots and videos. Unstoppable.

Like the pictures of torture she describes, Sontag's critical voice will not go away with her passing. Her writings will stand as a mirror of truth that America will have to look at, if it dares.

December 29, 2004

The reports out of South Asia are horrendous, over 70,000 confirmed dead and the toll could easilly double. Germany was hit hard with 49 confirmed dead and up to 600 missing. German Chancellor Schröder interrupted his holiday to respond to the disaster:

Earlier yesterday, White House spokesman Trent Duffy
said the president was confident he could monitor events effectively
without returning to Washington or making public statements in
Crawford, where he spent part of the day clearing brush and bicycling.
Explaining the about-face, a White House official said: "The president
wanted to be fully briefed on our efforts. He didn't want to make a
symbolic statement about 'We feel your pain.' "

Many Bush aides believe Clinton was too quick to head
for the cameras to hold forth on tragedies with his trademark empathy.
"Actions speak louder than words," a top Bush aide said, describing the
president's view of his appropriate role.

Some foreign policy specialists said Bush's actions
and words both communicated a lack of urgency about an event that will
loom as large in the collective memories of several countries as the
Sept. 11, 2001, attacks do in the United States. "When that many human
beings die -- at the hands of terrorists or nature -- you've got to
show that this matters to you, that you care," said Leslie H. Gelb,
president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relation

So, the White House uses the occasion of a global tragedy to criticize Bill Clinton. Clinton, meanwhile, is acting as a world leader and tries to organize a coordinated response:

LONDON (AFP) -
Former US president Bill Clinton (news - web sites)
urged a coordinated effort to provide relief to the countries stricken
by the tidal wave that killed tens of thousands across South Asia.

December 28, 2004

I first became aware of the DDR-Nostalgia phenomenon (also known as 'Ostalgie') through the terrific film Goodbye Lenin. I still thought it was just an amusing retro-hobby for collectors on eBay. But I can see now that it is a big business. Die Weltreports on a legal battle for control of the old symbols of the Arbeiter- u. Bauern-Staat:

What does the DDR represent to people? For some it seems to be nostalgia for gentler time when one was not thrust into the dog-eat-dog struggle for survival in West-Kapitalismus. The writer Katrin Dorn remembers life in Leipzig before the advent of cell phones and how important personal friendships were. The discussion forum on the Goodbye Lenin Web site also has many interesting responses. DDR-Freak writes: "It makes me sad that the DDR no longer exists...I'm proud of my homeland. We Ossis are really extraordinary."

Over at OstBlog Tom keeps abreast of everything pertaining to the vanished DDR; recent posts deal with Angela Merkel's 'Inner-Ossi" and Dresden's post-war architecture. I especially enjoyed reading about the photographer Klaus Enders whose erotic photos of female shock-workers reveal a sexier side of the DDR. So park your Trabbi, grab your Puff-Mais (popcorn) and Ket-Wurst (hot dog) (you can buy all the DDR products you need here ) and think back to a simpler time of Real Existing Socialism and border shootings.

December 26, 2004

Some of us have counted Angela Merkel out due to her frequent self-inflicted wounds on herself and her party, the CDU. But in the current Cicero Beverly Crawford, Professor at UC Berkeley, looks ten years into the future as Angela Merkel is starting her third term as Chancellor of Germany. How did she do it? By taking a page from Bismarck's 'Eisen und Korn' (Iron and Wheat) strategy of forming alliances from seemingly oppositional groups. Merkel succeeds in creating a 'Stahl und Silber' (Steel and Silver) alliance between aging retirees (30% of the German population in 2015) and corporate leaders. She brings in new guest workers to replenish the ranks of workers in Germany while virtually eliminating political asylum for other foreign groups. She also eliminates the relative isolation of France and Germany by reaching out to the United States through transforming NATO into NACTO = the North Atlantic Counter-Terrorist Organization . This comes after the terrorist attacks on Los Angeles, London and Frankfurt in 2011. What about Turkey? Integration into the EU is postponed indefinitely. Oh, and Joschka Fischer becomes the new editor for Die Zeit.

Professor Crawford looks into a future that is recognizable today. For a look into an alternate past that is strangely like the present, I strongly recommend Philip Roth's novel The Plot Against America (no German translation available yet). In this ingenious novel, Charles Lindbergh defeats FDR for the US presidency and keeps America out of the war raging in Europe even as he leads the country into a benign fascism. All of this is viewed from the narrative perspective of a young Jewish boy (Philip Roth) growing up in Newark, New Jersey. The author Roth has perfect pitch in his depiction of 1940's America. I especially appreciated the fictional 'editorials' of the New York Times calling for Jewish 'moderation' even as the nation slips into anti-Semitic violence.

Is The Plot Against America far-fetched? Not at all, which is why it has resonated with so many readers in America. The American press stood by while the Bush administration launched a preemptive war based on bogus intelligence. How many Americans have spoken out about the mounting evidence that the US Government has engaged in systematic torture - even killings - of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo? And finally, was anyone surprised last week when a new poll showed that half of all Americans agree that the civil liberties of Muslim-Americans should be restricted? Our support for our own Constitution appears to be very weak indeed.

The minimum monthly income required to stay out of the poverty statistics in Germany is 938 Euros. By that standard, 13.5% of the general population lives in poverty. And the situation will only get much worse under Hartz IV, according to many oberservers. Meanwhile, a recent poll reveals that 3/4 of Germans don't believe that the Hartz Reforms will improve the employment situation in Germany. Demonstrations are planned to protest the start of Hartz IV on January 3 - Genosse Tabu has the details.

The Hartz Reforms are seen as the logical consequence of 'Neo-Liberal Economics'. Ulrich Berger and Christoph Stein have a highly critical historical review of neo-liberal thoguht and policy in Telepolis today. The neo-liberal position is equated to a cult of the free market, and devaluation of government intervention.

I don't question that many of the neo-liberal reforms cited by the authors failed to have the desired effect on the Germany economy, but I am skeptical that the (pre-neo-liberal) 1970's represented a 'golden age' of economic policy in Germany. Also, one could characterize the Clinton Administration in the US as classically 'neo-liberal', and that was a period of unprecedented growth in employment and prosperity. Why did it succeed in the US and fail in Germany?

December 21, 2004

The entire discussion around Turkey and whether it belongs in the EU has led to an identity crisis of sorts in Germany. A couple of provocative articles today are worth noting. First Rüdiger Suchsland in Telepolis thinks that "The EU must become less Christian" and admit Turkey. He argues that Europe has never been 'Christian' or even culturally homogeneous:

That Suchsland has struck a chord (both positive and negative) in readers is evident from the lively (and sometimes quite shrill) comments following the piece.

At the other end of the spectrum it is worth reading Peter Scholl-Latour's interview in the right-wing Junge Freiheit. Even if one does not agree with Scholl-Latour's views, he displays a deep knowledge of Turkey and Middle-East cultural dynamics that tis missing from much of the commentary one encounters. Of course, he argues that bringing Turkey into the EU would be a catastrophe for Germany and for Europe. Scholl-Latour, however, goes off the deep end when he ridicules Foreign Secretary Joschka Fischer for his statement that admitting Turkey into the EU would be "D-Day for Islamic terrorism":

December 20, 2004

The US mainstream press has discovered European anti-Americanism. In today's Boston Globe, columnist Cathy Young writes about being viciously assaulted in "a small German city" while riding an elevator with a German gentleman in his 60's. The man is polite until he finds out she is from the US:

The man's demeanor changed visibly. After a glum silence, he remarked
sourly as we were leaving the elevator, "America is always starting
wars everywhere in the world. It's not good for people."

I was so shocked that the most obvious comeback did not occur to me
until a couple of minutes later, when he was out of sight: "You mean,
like World War II?"

I'd heard the stories before -- tourists in Europe being subjected to
anti-American verbal outbursts. But there's nothing like running into
it personally.

This episode perplexes her, since she sees the US and Europe united in a common 'War on Terror':

The divide is a tragic one. For all our differences, there is much of a
common Western culture that Europe and America share. Many secular
Europeans today see the United States as a country on a crusade to
impose its simplistic religious values around the world. But we aren't
at war against Holland or Belgium to stamp out same-sex marriage. Just
as during the Cold War, we are fighting a totalitarian force that would
crush freedom -- and in this fight, Europe and America have, or should
have, a common cause.

December 19, 2004

In an earlier post I wrote about the US Republican Party's Southern Strategy , where the wedge issue of racial equality has been used so effectively as to marginalize the Democrats in the southern states for the past generation. Now the CDU has decided that Turkey and the growing intolerance in Germany towards Muslim immigrants will be the horse it will ride to victory. To be sure, there are polling numbers that would seem to support this strategy.

Underscoring
the CDU's 'Christian' prefix, Merkel insists that Germany is based on
Judeo-Christian values and that these values must apply to everybody
living in the country.

She
calls for an end to tolerance for Islamists "preaching hate tirades"
and says laws should be loosened to allow their expulsion.

Such
views appear to be gaining strength in Germany, especially since the
brutal killing of Dutch film director Theo van Gogh by an Islamist
extremist.

An
ongoing survey of German views toward Muslims and 'foreigners' - who in
Germany are generally taken to be Turks comprising the country's
biggest, most visible minority - shows a growing intolerance.

Almost
60 percent say there are too many foreigners in Germany, according to a
poll of 3,000 people by the University of Bielefeld's Institute for
Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence.

In 2002 the number of Germans saying there were too many foreigners was 55 percent, according to the poll.

Some
70 percent of those surveyed say Islamic culture "does not fit into the
west" - up from 66 percent in 2003 - and one out of every three agrees
with the statement: "Due to the many Muslims living here I sometimes
feel like a foreigner in my own country."

Not everyone in the CDU leadership agrees with Merkel's hard line on Turkey. Volker Rühe says this anit-Turkey course will isolated the CDU in Europe, and he dismisses the argument that Turkey would represent a security threat to the EU.

It seems that Turkey is even a wedge issue in the SPD. Ex-Chancellor Helmut Schmidt has an opinion piece in Die Zeit where he warns that admitting Turkey will weaken the EU, thereby strengthening America's hand.

Actually Schmidt has been on an anti-Turkey rampage as of late: last month he attacked the idea of multiculturalism and said that it had been a mistake to allow Turkish guest workers into Germany. Meanwhile the 'Multi-Kulti' debate in Germany has caught the attention of the US press. Richard Berstein has a lengthy article in today's New York Times about a young German-born Turkish woman in Berlin who has run away from her family in order to escape an arranged marriage.

On November 17, 2001 the writer W.G.Sebald spoke on the occasion of the official opening of the Literaturhaus in Stuttgart. A translation of the speech is published in this week's The New Yorker magazine: An Attempt at Restitution: A memory of a German city. Unfortunately, the piece is not available on the magazine's Web site. Also, I have not been able to locate the original German (any thought?). The speech is quite remarkable, if you can find it. Sebald had really found his great theme: the destruction of Germany in the war. Memories of the war and the bombing weigh heaviiy on his memory of his first encounter with the city of Stuttgart. Sebald then evokes Friedrich Hölderlin, whose name is often associated with Stuttgart. Like Hölderlin, Sebald often felt like a stranger in his own country, and he quotes from Hölderlin's great poem Stuttgart: "Receive me kindly, stranger that I am." (Glückliches Stuttgart, nimm freundlich den Fremdling mir auf!)

Sebald then connects the fate of Suttgart with the French town of Tulle, which Hölderlin passed through on his travels on foot from Stuttgart to Bordeaux. Tulle was the site of one of the worst atrocities of the German occupation of France in World War II: on one day in 1944 the SS executed 99 men of all ages from the town in retribution for some action of the Resistance. In light of such horror, Sebald asks, what is literature good for?

So
what is literature good for? Am I, Hölderlin asks himself, to fare like the
thousands who in their springtime days lived in both foreboding and love but
were seized by the avenging Parcae on a drunken day, secretly and silently
betrayed, to do penance in the dark of an all too sober realm where wild
confusion prevails in the treacherous light, where they count slow time in frost
and drought and man still praises immortality in sighs alone? The synoptic view across the barrier of
death presented by the poet in these lines both overshadowed and illuminated,
however, by the memory of those to whom the greatest injustice was done. There
are many forms of writing; only in literature, however, can there be an
attempt at restitution over and above the mere recital of facts, and over and
above scholarship.

Just three weeks after delivering this speech, Sebald died tragically in London.

December 16, 2004

The German Information Service announced the launch of a new monthly newpaper, the Atlantic Times. The paper will have articles covering politics, business and culture with the goal of trying to restore the Germany-US alliance. The mission statement makes it sound like propaganda from the German Embassy in Washhington D.C.:

The Atlantic Times is based on the philosophy that the basis for every relationship is getting to know one another better.

If The Atlantic Times can succeed in exchanging information, ideas and understanding accross the Atlantic; if it can help our two peoples politically, financially or culturally; if it can contribute to the international dialogue, then it will have achieved its goal.

But the involvement of Die Zeit editor Theo Sommer should ensure at least some journalistic integrity, and some of the pieces announced in forthcoming issues sound promising.

For some reason, the paper is only available in print edition, but is free for any readers in the US and Canada. You can subscribe here. You can also read the front page of the premier edition here.